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AP, NPR Curb Use of “Obamacare” Term

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Editors Say Association With Law’s Opponents Persists

He-Said, He-Said Approach Faulted in Shutdown Coverage

New Miss America Booked for South Asian Journalists Gala

Darius Walker Given Vice President Title at CNN

D.C. Anchor J.C. Hayward Suspended in Corruption Probe

National Geographic’s Faces Offer Racial Guessing Game

Editor Calls Nontraditional Households Bad for Newspapers

Frank L. Fouce Dies, Helped Launch Univision Precursor

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Editors Say Association With Law’s Opponents Persists

The Associated Press and NPR have decided to cut back on use of the term “Obamacare,” with NPR describing the word as seeming “to be straddling somewhere between being a politically-charged term and an accepted part of the vernacular.”

Stuart Seidel, NPR’s managing editor for standards and practice, issued his style ruling Tuesday after this columnist contended in a note to him that the term can no longer be defended as neutral.

Separately, the AP went further and said the name of the health-care law, the Affordable Care Act, was also prejudicial in that “its very name is promotional; opponents believe it will not be affordable for individuals or the country. . . .”

Tom Kent, deputy managing editor and standards editor, wrote Tuesday, “In AP news reports, our preference is to use wording like ‘the nation’s new health insurance system,’ ‘the health care overhaul’ or ‘the new health care law.’ “

Kent wrote, ” ‘Obamacare’ was coined by opponents of the law and is still used by them in a derogatory manner. It’s true that the White House, and even [President] Obama himself, have used the term on occasion. But the administration hasn’t totally embraced ‘Obamacare’ and still uses the Affordable Care Act much of the time. We’re sticking with our previous approach to ‘Obamacare’: AP writers should use it in quotes, or in formulations like ‘the law, sometimes known as Obamacare, provides for …’ “

The health care law dominated the news this week as enrollment for new online health insurance exchanges opened on Tuesday, generating visits by 2.8 million people to the healthcare.gov website and more to others maintained by states. The number of visits was so high that many frustrated consumers could not get through.

At the same time, House Republicans demanded that the law, referred by most of them as “Obamacare,” be delayed, leading to an impasse that resulted in a partial shutdown of the federal government. That sent hundreds of thousands of federal workers from their workplaces and provided more opportunities for journalists to use the “Obamacare” term, which many justified because the president, in a bid to co-opt the word, had begun using it himself.

NPR’s ombudsman, Edward Schumacher-Matos, explained on Sept. 6 why NPR was using Obamacare.

Seidel said in that piece, “the term ‘Obamacare’ has lost its pedigree as a politically charged term.”

Schumacher-Matos concluded then, “It is safe to say, in other words, that the term ‘Obamacare’ has entered the general vocabulary as a largely neutral term. How most of us understand it depends on what we think of the law, and of the president.”

However, this columnist wrote Seidel, in Obama’s Tuesday speech decrying the government shutdown, the president used the term “Affordable Care Act” 10 times but never used “Obamacare.”

In a speech on Monday, Obama used “Affordable Care Act” four times, and again, “Obamacare” not at all.

By contrast, in a House debate on Saturday night, all the Democrats used “Affordable Care Act” and all the Republicans “Obamacare” for the time this viewer was watching. It was consistently “Obamacare” again on Tuesday as Republicans spoke after Obama’s speech.

Moreover, since the Sept. 6 piece was written, the president acknowledged that “Obamacare” was still partisan and still negative.

Last Thursday in Largo, Md., Obama said of the law, “once it’s working well, I guarantee you, they will not call it Obamacare.”

Seidel replied, “You make some good and fair points. I appreciate having them raised. I’m not persuaded that the use of ‘Obamacare’ is wholly inappropriate, but I am persuaded that good effort needs [to be] made to avoid over-using it. I’m sharing that feeling with NPR’s editors and correspondents.”

Seidel’s memo said, ” ‘Obamacare’ seems to be straddling somewhere between being a politically-charged term and an accepted part of the vernacular. And it seems to be on our air and in our copy a great deal. (I haven’t counted, and I’m not going to count: numbers don’t add up to good journalism.) But word choices do leave an impression. Please avoid overusing ‘Obamacare.’ On first reference, it’s best to refer to the ‘Affordable Care Act’ or ‘the health care law.’ On later references, feel free to use ‘Obamacare’ but mix it up with other ways to refer to the law.”

Journal-isms asked other news organizations for their policies on use of the term. Responses indicated that many had not caught up with NPR and the AP.

As reported this week, CNBC said it had asked half of 812 poll respondents if they supported Obamacare and the other half if they supported the Affordable Care Act.

“First thing: 30 percent of the public don’t know what ACA is, vs. only 12 percent when we asked about Obamacare. More on that later,” Steve Liesman reported.

“Now for the difference: 29 percent of the public supports Obamacare compared with 22 percent who support ACA. Forty-six percent oppose Obamacare and 37 percent oppose ACA. So putting Obama in the name raises the positives and the negatives. . . .”

He-Said, He-Said Approach Faulted in Shutdown Coverage

“Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe just days before the looming deadline for a federal government shutdown, Politico’s Mike Allen was assessing the politics of the controversy and predicting which Beltway players would get tagged with the blame for the intentional legislative debacle,” Eric Boehlert wrote Tuesday for Media Matters for America.

“Despite the fact that Republicans were refusing to fund the government if the White House balked at the demand to essentially repeal its 2010 health care law, Allen suggested President Obama would be the real political loser.

“Why Obama? Because he’s more famous than the GOP congressional leaders whose actions are causing the impasse.

” ‘A lot of people in the country don’t know John Boehner. There’s no one in the world who doesn’t know Barack Obama,’ Allen explained. ‘So when Washington is not working, it’s going off the rails in a very visible way, a way that is vivid and touches people, that’s not good ultimately for the president.’

“That’s an awfully tenuous path to blame Obama for the Republicans’ proudly obstructionist strategy to stop funding the government.

“Yet so it goes within portions of the Beltway press corps who are straining to include Democrats in the shutdown blame game; to make sure ‘both sides’ are targeted for tsk-tsk scoldings about ‘Washington dysfunction,’ and that the Republicans’ truly radical nature remains casually ignored. This media act is getting old. And this media act may be emboldening the Republicans’ extreme behavior. . . .”

Dan Froomkin agreed Tuesday in a piece for Al Jazeera America. “U.S. news reports are largely blaming the government shutdown on the inability of both political parties to come to terms,” he wrote. “It is supposedly the result of a ‘bitterly divided’ Congress that ‘failed to reach agreement’ (Washington Post) or ‘a bitter budget standoff’ left unresolved by ‘rapid-fire back and forth legislative maneuvers’ (New York Times). This sort of false equivalence is not just a failure of journalism. It is also a failure of democracy. . . .”

New Miss America Booked for South Asian Journalists Gala

Nina Davuluri, the 2014 Miss America and the first Indian American to wear the crown, is scheduled to participate in the annual awards gala Saturday of the South Asian Journalists Association.

Sovy Azhath, president of the association, which has “nearly 700 active paying members,” told Journal-isms by email that a “fellow SAJA board member booked Miss America for our gala — Nina seemed willing and excited to attend.”

Soledad O’Brien is scheduled to be keynote speaker and Kevin Negandhi, an anchor on ESPN SportsCenter, is to be master of ceremonies. The event, to be held at the Yale Club of New York City, is sold out, but the association is establishing a waiting list. “The capacity for this year’s event is 150 and we have reached that number of guests on sept 28th,” board member Jigar Mehta told Journal-isms by email.

Darius Walker Given Vice President Title at CNN

CNN regional bureau chiefs Darius Walker, Pete Janos and Mary Lynn Ryan have been promoted to vice president, Terence Burke, vice president of newsgathering for CNN/U.S. told the CNN staff on Tuesday. There is no change in their duties, a CNN spokeswoman told Journal-isms.

Walker is chief of CNN’s largest national bureau, based in New York, which includes 105 people from Maine to Indiana, according to a bio prepared by the New York Association of Black Journalists.

“He also oversees the business and financial news resources for CNN USA,” Walker wrote in his LinkedIn profile. “Prior to his New York assignment, Walker was the senior director of newsgathering for CNN’s Washington, D.C., bureau.

“Walker previously served as vice president of CNN Business News, where he managed business news coverage for CNN, CNNfn, Headline News and CNN Radio; served as supervising producer for CNNfn’s Atlanta operations and as senior producer for the business news program, Lou Dobbs Moneyline. From 1996 to 1998, Walker worked for CNN’s national desk in Atlanta as a senior editor and producer. . . .”

Mark Whitaker, the former Newsweek editor who as executive vice president and managing editor of CNN Worldwide became the highest-ranking African American at CNN, resigned in January, saying he wanted to give then-new CNN chief Jeff Zucker “his own team and management structure and the freedom to communicate one clear vision to the staff.” No African American held a position at that level under Zucker.

D.C. Anchor J.C. Hayward Suspended in Corruption Probe

“WUSA9 weekday noon anchor J.C. Hayward — once called a ‘news anchor legend’ by the Washington Post — is among several people being sued by District [of Columbia] Attorney General Irv Nathan for their alleged roles in taking more than $3 million from a D.C. public charter school ,” Will Sommer reported Tuesday for Washington City Paper.

“Former officials at Options Public Charter School, including the chief executive officer and chief operating officer, are accused of extracting money from the 17-year-old school through extravagant salaries and sweetheart contracts with companies they controlled. The District wants the school to be placed in receivership, with the assets of some defendants — although not Hayward’s — frozen.

WUSA added, “No criminal charges have been filed.

“JC Hayward told WUSA9 she did nothing wrong, and all she did was sign bills in her capacity as chair of the charter school’s board, and that she received no money. She says she resigned from the school’s board last week.

“WUSA General Manager Mark Burdett says Hayward has been relieved of her duties at WUSA pending further investigation.”

Hayward was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame in 2011 [video.]

National Geographic’s Faces Offer Racial Guessing Game

“When people ask Celeste Seda, 26, what she is, she likes to let them guess before she explains her Dominican-Korean background,” Lise Funderburg writes in the October issue of National Geographic. The author of “Black, White, Other: Biracial Americans Talk About Race and Identity” (1994), Funderburg composed an essay that accompanies photographs of multiracial people by Martin Schoeller.

Funderburg’s “The Changing Face of America” piece continues, Seda “points out that even then she has revealed only a fraction of her identity, which includes a Long Island childhood, a Puerto Rican adoptive family, an African-American sister, and a nascent acting career. The attention she gets for her unusual looks can be both flattering and exhausting. ‘It’s a gift and a curse,’ Seda says.”

Funderburg adds, “If we can’t slot people into familiar categories, perhaps we’ll be forced to reconsider existing definitions of race and identity, presumptions about who is us and who is them.

“Perhaps we’ll all end up less parsimonious about who we feel connected to as we increasingly come across people like Seda, whose faces seem to speak that resounding line from Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’:

” ‘I am large, I contain multitudes.’ “

Frank L. Fouce Dies, Helped Launch Univision Precursor

“Frank L. Fouce, an impresario of Spanish-language entertainment who turned the historic Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles into a prestigious venue for a burgeoning Latino market and helped launch the television network that became Univision, died Sept. 22 in Los Angeles,” Elaine Woo wrote this week for the Los Angeles Times. “He was 85.

“The cause was lymphoma, said his daughter, Paula Fouce.

“Mr. Fouce was a co-founder of the Spanish International Communications Corp., which operated the first Spanish-language television stations in the United States, including KMEX-TV, Univision’s flagship outlet and the No. 1 source for Spanish-language news and entertainment in Los Angeles. . . . “

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